Joseph Fischer was alone in the Hub. Gwen had gone home hours ago in a flurry of angry tears. Jack had vanished to one of his rooftops after suspending her for a week and putting them both on Weevil duty for a month. Fish had no idea where Ianto or Miranda were. Frankly, he didn't care. Evie… Miranda… that cold hearted bitch could rot for all he cared. And honestly? He had no idea why he was still at the Hub himself. He wanted nothing more than to go home and pour himself a stiff drink… or ten.
He reached up and turned off his workstation's monitor. He sat back in his chair and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, fighting back tears. He was a chemical engineer for Christ's sake, just a scientist. All this death? Torchwood and aliens? It was too big for him. It was too much. He couldn't do this. What ever made him think he could do this?
The sound of glass clinking against his desk startled him. He looked down and saw one of Jack's crystal tumblers on his desk with a finger of Scotch in the bottom. He looked up, expecting to see Jack's face and instead seeing Miranda standing over him. Anger and revulsion bubbled up in his chest at the sight of her.
"Get the fuck away from me, you monster," he said coldly.
She didn't seem the least bit disturbed by his reaction nor the slur he hurled at her. "Drink this and then come with me, Fish."
"Give me one fucking good reason why the fuck I should follow you anywhere, you heartless piece of shit?" He stood up, rounding on her and raising his voice to yell. "I don't know you. Did I ever know you? You're a doctor, for Christ's sake, Evie! A fucking doctor! How could you?! How?! He was innocent! Just a boy! A child! You cut him down in cold blood!"
She didn't back away from the venom of each accusation. She knew he was angry, using her as a convenient target for blame. Jack had had to face the same when he'd sacrificed Jasmine to the fairies, when the team didn't yet realise that it'd been the only way. Fish didn't see it yet. He didn't understand that there'd been no other choice. He didn't understand that the boy had been lost from the moment he'd picked up the shiny metal on the dock.
Looking him square in the eye, she picked up the tumbler and held it out to him. "Drink this and come with me, Fish."
"Fuck you!" he shouted, knocking the glass from her hand and it shattered on the concrete floor. He turned his head upwards, shouting into the empty Hub, whirling about angrily. "It's all filth isn't it? The Weevils and the bollocks and the shit that comes here? That's all we get… the shit…"
"Come with me," she said gently. "Please, Fish."
He scrubbed at his face, angrily, wanting to do nothing but punch her… someone… anything… Instead he followed. He didn't know why but he followed her as she went down the east stairs. He followed her as she went down into the archives. He didn't come down here often. It was typically Ianto's domain. Eventually, they stopped in front of a closed doorway with a keypad lock. He watched Miranda punch in a short code. Once the door was unlocked, she opened it and gestured for him to follow her inside.
It was a typical archive room, filled with shelves piled with various items and artefacts, each one had a paper tag hanging from it. Miranda walked over to a shelf, donning a pair of cotton gloves and picking up what looked like nothing more than a rectangle of transparent glass. She walked back over to him and held the glass up so he could see. She slide her finger along the bottom edge and the glass sprang to life. It was a picture frame. An alien scene was displayed on the front. Four humanoid life forms were standing in a group next to a deep blue lake, the sky was blue but the trees and grass were a burnt orange. It was clearly a family photograph, two parents and two children, perhaps on holiday. The beings in the picture weren't human but their happiness was unmistakable. Arms were linked and wrapped around each other. They were all smiling. Aliens smile… After a few seconds, the scene changed again. It was the same lake and the same family but the children were older. After another few seconds the picture changed. It was again, the same lake and the same family but only one parent was standing with the two much older children, who now looked like adults. One of the children was holding an infant.
Fish looked from the picture frame up to Miranda and back to the frame again as it continued to cycle through the family's precious memories, tears springing in his eyes.
"This fell through the rift in 1973. We don't turn it on often. We don't know how long its power source will last," she said, sliding her hand along the bottom edge in the opposite direction and the images stopped, the glass becoming transparent again.
She walked away, replacing the picture frame on its shelf. She bent down, picking up a small cylinder that looked like plastic. The cylinder had no markings on it. "This is what they use as envelopes for mailing letters on a planet called Tyresisia XI. It's a future human colony in the 44th century. Inside is a letter, written by a soldier to her husband. It fell through the rift in 1904, sealed and unaddressed. Jack translated it back in the 60's. The soldier wrote it the day before battle. She was saying goodbye, writing a letter she knew her husband would never read."
The tears prickling Fish's eyes finally began to fall. He looked at the cylinder, wondering if this letter would remain in Torchwood's possession for two thousand years until it could be sent to the intended recipient.
After replacing the cylinder on its shelf, she took another item from a different shelf. It was a small box made of some sort of wood, intricately carved. Miranda flipped the latch and opened the box. Inside were some stones of various colours, sizes and shapes. Each stone had something written on it.
"This fell through in 2002. Jack and I found it in a dumpster on one of the estates. The box had opened and the stones were scattered. It took us three hours to find them all," she said as she reached into the box and plucked out a rose coloured stone. "Jack translated the symbols. They're dates and places. They belonged to an alien being from the 38th century who was widely travelled. That alien would visit a world, chose a stone and write the name of the planet and the date on it. Keepsakes of a traveller who wanted to remember the places they'd been."
Pieces of other worlds… Fish felt his jaw drop as he reached out, picking up a handful of the rocks and let them fall between his fingers. All these aliens… they're just people… He lifted his head, feeling more tears rolling down his cheeks as he looked around the room.
As if reading his mind, Miranda smiled softly and said, "Every item in here is something beautiful and brilliant that the rift has given us. Some of the items are from human beings in our future. Some of them are from alien beings on alien worlds separated from us by space and time. But every single one of them is filled with hope and love."
"Why did you bring me down here?" he asked. "Why are you showing this to me?"
"Because today won't be the last day like this, Fish. Today, I had to shoot a ten year old boy possessed by an alien psychopath. I may have to do the same thing tomorrow. Or maybe you will. The decisions we're faced with? The choices we have to make? Sometimes it's too big and too much for any of us."
She let the lid of the box fall completely back. There was something written on the inside of the lid in the same glyphs as those on the stones. He wondered what it said.
Miranda, reading his mind again, slowly said, "It says, 'To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour…'"
"William Blake…" Fish gasped. Aliens will read William Blake…
"This," Miranda said, waving her arm around the room at the shelves, "is what we're fighting for here, Fish, the future of humanity. Do you want to still be a part of Torchwood?"
"Ad astra per aspera… A rough road leads to the stars…"* Joseph Fischer knew it might damn him but his road was with Torchwood and where ever it would lead him.